Gay Chicken needs to end so I can start using Kratos for other things

While Kratos and Leonidas have their share of similarities, they’re also very different in some key respects. Frank Miller has said in interviews that as a young child, the thing that really inspired him about the story of the 300 Spartans was how it taught him that victories are not necessarily what make heroes. While tenacious, Leonidas doesn’t quite measure up to Kratos’s unyielding drive to win, which is not unlike an angry bull moose trapped in a Chinese finger trap made of rage.

I feel like of the two, Leonidas would have a greater capacity to graciously accept defeat.

This is the first time that I ever deemed it necessary to comment on this comic. I’ve come close, but never have I actually done it. Another +1 for you. If it wasn’t so late, I’d be rolling on the ground, but instead I’ll just accept laughing so hard that I pee my pants. Well done.

Didja forget the part where he murdered his wife and children in a God Induced Fit of Rage? Someone posted below that the greek gods were dicks, and they really are. They’re a bunch of petty, selfish assholes, and frankly, nothing made me happier than watching Kratos swordfuck the whole lot of them right to the grave.

It is all in the delivery. Kratos, why is a powerful man like you still here in Best Buy? I think you have far more potential. I want you to think about career options that would actually challenge you. Take some time off until you come up with a good challenging career for yourself.

It’s the final panel that says otherwise. Leonidas has a family to go back to, an actual wife and child. That’s worth far more than simple “honor”.
Kratos has neither jack nor shit, much less jack shit.

I don’t think they are even thinking clearly. It’s not logic at all to just prove some guy/girl with dumb comment like “There are no females here” right on the internet. Taekwon even got it wrong too. There has been more females on the internet since 2003. Probably even before that.

Well before that, definitely. I used to hang out with friends in chatrooms around ’96-’97; easily half of the people hanging out in there were women, and I ended up talking with plenty of them on the phone, so I can certify that they definitely weren’t the old stereotype of the old-hairy-guy-pretending-to-be-a-woman, either…

I think the only reason people think there are no women on the internet is that, for the most part, it’s the guys who start having dumb arguments all over it. It’s the same thing with American tourists, come to think of it. 95% of them are great, courteous, polite, friendly, the kind of people you’d like to meet — but the other 5% are loud and obnoxious. Guess which ones get noticed?

What? It’s a rule deeply ingrained in the rules of our society. The reality of the statement doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, the moment a woman joins the internet she becomes a man; merely for the sake of upholding our satirical rules (honestly, if you didn’t notice this was nothing more than harmless, and possibly even helpful, satire…I have no words).

He was favor by other gods after gow1 he could have just use that connection to get his Wife and child back from the dead. I kinda wish for a sequel where you play a slightly older daughter piss off that her dead beat father never visits and breaks out of the place she was in to search for him.

I’m just entertained that people are all about how much the Greek Gods were dicks, and somehow Kratos/mortals are an exception. It’s even showing in the comic – he’s just as big a dick as the Gods he went about killing.

I don’t think it’s so much that people are saying mortals aren’t dicks, but how the Gods are bigger dicks. It comes with the territory of being an omnipotent asshole with Godlike powers and a perchance of pissing all over mortals. Mortals can’t exactly piss back. They can try to mess with the Gods, but that normally ends poorly. And I only say normally because Kratos here, one giant asshole mortal (Before the end of the first game), kicks all kinds of Godly ass.

It you look back on the messages you commented on, not one actually said mortals were innocent in all of this. Just that the Greek Gods were unlike most other pantheons in that their Gods were admitted assholes with few redeeming qualities.

Wasn’t just the Greeks. There’s a reason the singular term for Aesir is áss. I can’t help but suspect Fenris, Jormungand, and Hel would have been perfectly cool with and maybe even helped them during Ragnarok if they hadn’t labeled the three siblings monsters and tried to murder or torture/imprison them over crimes foretold, which probably wouldn’t have happened at all if the Aesir didn’t set things into motion by trying to kill or imprison them.

Thing I love about GoW is nobody- Gods or Kratos is blamess. They both contribute to the creation and destruction of each other. If Kratos would face the fact he fucked up when he made the mistake almost EVREY young rising military star makes in chosing his career and glory over his family he would not be what he is now. He has a few moments where he does- but why deal with complicated emotions when you can just KILL EVREYTHING right now and deal with the emotions later.
And if the Gods had actually followed through with letting the man heal instead of keeping the wound of his wrong doings open and weeping they probably would not be dead.

I think that the Greek gods were supposed to represent small parts of one being, when they cooperate they can make great things happen, but when separate the flaws of each one appear ( Ares is violent, Zeus is paranoid, Aphroditie is egotistical, etc etc)
and because of this caused Kratos to rip the intestines out of them and use them to decorate his walls

The reason the gods were such dicks in the games,well,at least in the second/third one,is because those sins/evils inside pandora’s box came out when Kratos opened it and they went inside the gods,turning them into almighty douchebags,although Kratos didn’t kill all of the gods,Aphrodite was still alive at the end of the game series.

Agreed. We have the lead male that is a dedicated family man, Ganondorf who is just a legitimate business man, Canadian Guy who wants us to remember the little enjoyments in life, and Jared with his be yourself message and Kratos being sad about his lot in life doesn’t fit in. Confusing.

And Dante who cross stitched a bear into his arm, and the Big Daddy who attacked the parents of the kids it was guarding, and Krauser who locked Chris Redfield in his car and dressed up like him to get Wesker’s attention, Commander who went back in time to punch himself in the face, Kain who needs to constantly kill people or he’ll die, Duke Nukem who puffs himself up to hide what a fanboy he is…

I thought with all of that, your message was clear that a real man is not just a macho, destroy everything in sight, unless it’s women or food, then use those as appropriate stereotype that everyone sticks with. I like that message Coelasquid. I guess Thisnthat didn’t get the memo.

The point of this comic is that I make fun of ludicrously macho action heroes and stereotypes. People who come in on a weekly basis saying “Well this isn’t very manly!” are more often than not completely missing the point.

I’ve actually never been able to decide Wesker really belongs in this comic. He’s mostly done the arrogant god complex thing that you see in alot of villians. But Wesker sadly truely believes that he’s making the world a better place by taking over and wiping out most of humanity. He didnt ever seem overly macho to me y’know? More of a Rogue type than a warrior.

Chris and Krauser on the other hand…hoo yeah…. the testosterone drips from those two. :-/

Though imo Jill Valentine is more manly than Sir-Whinesalot Chris Redfield.

Very good reasoning there, Coelasquid. But as the Commander says, the only real way to win Gay Chicken is not to play in the first place. And he was right, just look at how crestfallen Kratos is there, despite his supposed victory.

Mayhaps murder is getting a bit stale for our Kratos.
I love the last panel- it reminds me of Ambassador Udina after the Council initially tells you humanity’s not allowed in the clubhouse. Ambassador Sad Puppy.

Though technically Kratos may have won, with how Leonidas conceded defeat and how Kratos reacted, I think in a way, Leonidas proved he’s the actual winner for being man enough to concede the way he did :)

offtopic to the comic here but how could quan chi keep Scorpion and Noob saibot around as menservants when Scorpion kill Noob(older subzero) for something Quan chi did in means of getting two piss off ninja wraiths and wasn’t really Noob fault.
which brings up to the reason to say all this, is Kratos only friends with exception with the agency MK and SC crew?

Scorpion might fit in with them, considering that he too is a father that loved his son, but I don’t know how well MK would work. The women need as many lessons in dialing down the manliness as the men.

i’m not gay at all, but there’s something intensely manly about those two monsters faces meeting like that in panel 1. and kratos now knows what it feels like to be alone. yeah sure bud, you won. in the end, its much better to have a nice warm wife to go home to, and a kid you can raise and show the world “look, i made this. stand in awe, as i have now passed my manliness on”.

Also, this reminds me of my favorite scene in the Iliad, where Hector goes back into the city of Troy one last time to see his wife and son. It really showed another side of him, one that was kinder and not obsessed with spearing Greeks in the ribs and whatnot.

Naw. Not only do I do that, but reading things that have never been filmed or recorded my brain automatically fills in the person I think would voice that character. So if you’re weird, I’m like… triple weird.

Anyone else hear Bender saying “Aw, crap, now I made myself feel bad.” in the last panel? Anyway though, it’s for the best, Kratos, you need to resume looking for a job anyway since I’m sure you lost your one at Best Buy.

I dunno, I have a hard time feeling sympathetic for him. The story was like “I WENT TO THE TEMPLE TO MURDER EVERYONE INSIDE BUT THEN I THOUGHT MAYBE I SHOULDN’T BUT THEN I DID ANYWAY AND MY FAMILY WAS IN THERE BUT IT WAS SMOKEY SO I COULDN’T TELL UNTIL I ALREADY MURDEREDDDD THEMMMM AREEEEEEESSSS!!!“

But they also did this, which appears to have inspired modern frat hazing: Plutarch also states that Spartans treated the Helots “harshly and cruelly”: they compelled them to drink pure wine (which was considered dangerous – wine usually being cut with water) “…and to lead them in that condition into their public halls, that the children might see what a sight a drunken man is; they made them to dance low dances, and sing ridiculous songs…”

Spartans also raided their neighbors and burned their crops. That had a lot to do with Athens not showing up until Sparta was doomed. Any idiots could have held the pass at Thermopylae when it was only 3 people wide (contrary to the wild fantasy of 300). Particularly when you add in 1,000 Thespians who were just as good at war as the Spartans but were far less creepy.

Frank Miller says a lot of things that aren’t actually true about 300. Also inside of 300.

Havin’ seen the (1962) movie he based the comic on, apparently what initially impressed him was how effectively the Persians can be made into a stand-in for the Soviets, as long as you put a lot of freedom-loving anachronisms into Sparta.

Tell that stuff to the Helots who died on the front lines at Thermopylae, Frank.

Something is always lost in translation. For one thing I think the Spartans absolutely hated democracy. The strong get a voice, the weak die. I’m probably misinterpreting this entirely. Only bit of Greek knowledge Im fairly sure of is that Athenians treated women like chattel (less rights than slaves) whereas Spartans had equal rights going or something akin to it.

I think in Miller’s case, it’s more plain ignorance. Somehow his Spartans are openly scornful of, to whit:

1. Superstition, as embodied in their own religious traditions.
2. Pederasty, in this case pushed off as a particularly Athenian custom. (Agoge, Leonidas, Agoge.)
3. The Persian “slave empire,” as distinguished from the more acceptable Greek slave empire.

Whole set-up kind of ignores that the Battle of Artemisium (won by Athens’ preposterous naval build-up) is what really kept the Persians from overrunning Greece, but that one is a forgivable conceit since we’re dramatizing Thermopylae in particular.

Well, I think the Battle of Artemisium would have been an equally important part of the story if the Greek poets actually wrote a dramatic and detailed account of it. The reason why Thermopylae is so central in most people’s minds in the defeat of Persia is that it was retold so many times in such a dramatic fashion, singing the bravery of Leonidas and his 300.

Which is the problem with a lot of history from back then. It’s hard to tell what is truly the most important story and what isn’t, because most history is passed down by bards and poets by word of mouth or in crumbling records, and favorite events get more and more dramatic and important as they are told.

I think the entire point of the 300 is that Leonidas tried to stall the Persian land forces for as long as possible, granting the rest of Greece a chance to recognize the threat and prepare an adequate defense. Much like the Romans did in a lot of campaigns that are highly emphasized in Roman history – a few brave men taking on entire legions of foreigners in the hopes of eventually winning time for their fellows.

And it makes sense; it’s certainly true that the Greek forces were outnumbered, in a situation where victory in the normal sense was actually impossible, but they fought anyway. That’s heroism if there’s such a thing as heroism.

Though, the details tend to get fuzzy with all the retellings. The numbers suffer the worst deflation, in order to throw the Spartans’ military prowess into sharp relief. The Spartans were joined by (thousands of) free Greeks from the other city-states, as well as (an uncounted number of) slaves who were actively pressed into battle, much as Xerxes did. In Greek verse that makes sense, but we’ve got access to all sorts of historical and archaelogical information. Though Miller’s version makes a casual nod to the rest of Greece, no Helots in sight.

I don’t think Miller wanted to tell the story in a historical sense. I think he wanted to tell a fantastic story about Thermopylae in the manner that one of Leonidas’ men would tell it (I mean, that’s how it is in the 300 comic – a survivor of Thermopylae telling his fellow Greeks the heroic tale just before battle with the Persians to lift their spirits). In the manner of how a bard would tell it – embellishing some details, while ignoring the more depressing ones. In order to make a point about bravery.

So… A comic book comes off like a comic book and the movie based on it is like a comic book and bears no relation to reality so you have a problem with that. I hated the movie 300 because it had no bearing on the reality of Thermopylae but I knew it was a comic book kind of movie and expected it to be monumentally stupid. That made it fun to watch. It was like Plan 9 From Outer Space but with special effects.

Hah, the first thing I thought when I read the description was “Frank Miller says a lot of things, period.” Unfortunately for everyone who was appreciating him on an exaggerated or ironic level, it now appears that he actually straight-up believes them.

really? then why hasn’t either ie nor firefox been able to load the site for more than a week now? please think before you speak/reply. i wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t a triply checked issue that came out of nowhere with no good reason to it that i can’t fix on my own (yet). this includes ANY external link from ANYWHERE using both ie and firefox (update: opera too) i’m beginning to wonder if i might have to proxy it. but thanks! your reply didn’t help in the least.
i suppose it could be my isp, but why now out of the blue?

what i love is that king of the gods zeus loved seducing women, as different animals, wtf
also in rome he was called jupiter optimus maximus
the first and the best for those who arent fluent in latin lol

There was something about the third panel that had been bothering me all this time. Something about their faces didn’t seem quite right, what could it be?

It just hit me: I don’t think I’ve ever seen these two with a relaxed face. Hell, maybe I should say a “relaxed brow”. Obviously not an artistic flaw, it’s just these ludicrously macho Spartans are born with a frown and a scar.

I think Leonidas has just show to everyone that even the manliest men don’t have to show their manliness through brute force and winning at gay chicken. True manliness is of the spirit, both fierce and powerful, yet reserved and refined.

In his quest to find someone else to play Gay Chicken with, Kratos encounters Sten, and challenges him. Sten, not finding it worth his time, kicks Kratos in the dangly bits and saunters off to find cookies.

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk
I’m the Qun’s own man–no time to talk
Rebels grey and organs warm
I’ve been Beresaad since I was born
And now parshaara, it’s a bas,
And I disdain it, just because
The Qun can try to understand
The Blight’s effects on foreign land

Wanna hear something funny? I think Leonidas actually won here. He respectfully admits defeat and goes back to his wife and child. Which,I’ll remind you,Leonidas still has. I think he kinda burned him there. XD